Work

Work has been absolutely flat-out for me as usual, but despite that, it’s been a very enjoyable year with lots of interesting projects. I attended less conferences and work related events this year but had great fun at the ones I did make it to.

My workmate Kim and I presented Dealing with the different attitudes to accessibility at the OZeWAI conference at La Trobe University. The presentation was a fun look at culture change involving the Attitude Adjusters game cards that we did up.

Ruth & Kim presenting at OZeWAI 2011 conference, photo by Gary Barber

Our Attitude Adjusters game cards

UX Australia is one of my favourite conferences – it’s the once-a-year catch up with all my User Experience (UX) family.

Some old and new friends, post UX Australia conference

LOVING the photobooth at UX Australia

Kim, Scott and Ruth - rockin' the Stamford UX Superhero t-shirts

Family & friends

My brother turned 21, our friends Craig (and his twin Wesley) and Caronne celebrated special birthdays this year, my mum came to visit and Alastair’s mum also came to spend xmas with us. Our friends Joel and Kelly got married and we got to share in their special day by being their photographers. I played paintball for the first time when my youngest sister celebrated her 19^th birthday.

Mum and I at Floriade, Canberra

Bec and friends at her paintball birthday party

Our Perth friends at Joel & Kelly's wedding

Events & other social things

Lots of organising over 2011 – I helped to organise either in the lead-up or on the day: BarCampCanberra, TEDxCanberra, Sydney SkepticCamp and the Make Hack Void xmas party.

Checking out cupcake entries at BarCampCanberra (photo by Gavin Tapp)

My volunteers helping me pack up the TEDxCanberra showbags using a very efficient production line! (Photo by TEDxCanberra)

Me and my trusty clipboard at TEDxCanberra (photo by Gavin Tapp)

Hubby and I were one of the lucky 50 that attended the very first CSIROtweetup, to celebrate the launch of the Mars Rover Curiosity.

Our fellow space geeks (Photo by Martin Ollman)

Watching the launch

Watching the dish move in preparation for the launch

Making stuff

2011 was the year for making things. I made my first laser-cut jewellery, which will be available under the CrankyBot label in 2012; learned to sew (badly); got dressed up in various costumes, mainly the Lady Mechanika comic con costume which was the main impetus for learning to sew.

One of my space invaders, from my CrankyBot label

Doctor Who magnetic poetry and TARDIS I made as an xmas present (located next to the TARDIS cookie jar)

When in Rome, do as the Romans do. Hubby dressed as Commander Shepard from Mass Effect video game, and I’m dressed as Lady Mechanika. Comic Con in costume was a very different affair to Comic Con in layperson's clothing.

Hubby and I also made our first sausages with my KitchenAid sausage maker attachment! They were utterly delicious, particularly as the meat was flavoured with fresh herbs from our garden.

I did a lot of baking in 2011 - putting my KitchenAid to good use.

Travel

Hubby and I visited the United States in July. The main reason was to attend The Amazing Meeting (TAM) in Vegas, but we also discovered that Comic Con, the BIG (and I mean big) pop culture convention, was on around the same time. The US trip was huge – we visited our friend Bob and his wife in Dallas, Texas, then headed off to Las Vegas for to check out the sights, followed by TAM, then on to San Diego for LEGOLand, followed by Comic Con and New York. I love New York.

Discovering fossils at Eisenhower State Park, Texas

Caught up with old friends and made new friends, Las Vegas

Penn Jillette’s rock and roll party ticket, Las Vegas

Rock on at Penn Jillette’s party, Las Vegas

How awesome is Legoland!

The very brilliant Evolution shop at New York (thanks for the recommendation Minnie)

We made a muppet, Dr Chels, at FAO Schwarz

Playing the Big Piano at FAO Schwarz, New York

We visited the New York hackerspace - they have a great space with lots of character

We saw some awesome graff at 5 Pointz, New York. Hubby and I spent hours wandering around the building taking photos. We finished up with a late lunch at a local diner.

On the last day as we started the very eventful journey home to Canberra from New York (crisscrossing the country and seeing many airports!), we discovered that our flight was cancelled due to weather conditions. Fortunately Qantas upgraded us to Business Class and we made it home to Australia in the lap of luxury (I didn’t want the flight to end!).

Looking forward

2011 on the whole has been a good year. I had some health issues (getting addressed in early 2012), I’ve attempted to address my fear of vegetables (and learned a lot about myself in the process), and I learned a lot of new things. I look forward to 2012 – getting CrankyBot off the ground, working on a number of exciting UX and accessibility projects and learning to take it a bit easier. Here’s to 2012!

Bailey’s is one of my favourite alcoholic drinks, so when the time came to make cupcakes for CupCakeCamp held at Skepticamp in Sydney, I decided that I needed to do something with Baileys. So here’s my Chocolate Bailey’s Mini Cupcakes, adapted from Ellie’s Lovely Lemon Cupcakes and Maison Cupcake’s Chocolate Bailey’s Cupcakes with Chocolate Bailey’s Buttercream Icing.

Chocolate Bailey’s mini cupcakes recipe

Time required: 90 minutes including cooling time and decorating

Serves: 48 mini muffins

Ingredients

For the cupcake bases:

• 180g butter, softened
• 400g caster sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 2 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 450g all-purpose flour
• 25g cocoa powder, sieved
• 1 1/4 cups milk
• 2 tablespoons Baileys or other Irish cream liqueur

For the buttercream:

• 225g unsalted butter, softened
• 6-8 cups icing mixture (use icing mixture instead of icing sugar, otherwise it will be too sweet)
• 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 100ml Bailey’s or other Irish cream liqueur to taste (I didn’t really measure this – I kept adding, tasting, adding, tasting and so on)

Directions

1. Preheat your oven to 175 degrees C, and cream together your butter and sugar till creamy.
2. Beat in the eggs, vanilla, salt and baking powder and continue beating till the mixture is light and fluffy.
3. Add your milk and flour in 3 alternating batches, beating well after each addition. Once all the milk and flour has been added, beat at top speed for about 30 sec – 1 minute or till the mixture is smooth and shiny.
4. Line your cupcake baking tray with cupcake liners and fill each liner about 1/2 – 2/3 full.
5. Place your lined and filled cupcake tray into the oven, and bake for about 10 minutes. When the cupcakes are done, a toothpick inserted into each cupcake will come out clean. DO NOT overbake the cupcakes.
6. Leave to cool in the tins for a few minutes before transferring to a wire rack. Allow to cool completely before covering with icing.
7. For the icing, beat the butter till it is creamy, then add 3 cups of sugar, milk, vanilla extract and Baileys and beat at high speed for 5 minutes. Gradually add the rest of the sugar, adding 1 cup at a time and beating for 5 minutes after each addition.
8. Taste the icing – if needed, add more Baileys. Once all the sugar has been added, continue beating at high speed till the mixture is extremely pale, light and very fluffy.
9. Fill a pipping bag about 1/2 full. Pipe it onto the cupcakes in spirals.
10. Eat and enjoy!

Yesterday, hubby and I (along with a car-load of family & friends) made the very early morning drive over to Sydney for the very first Skepticamp Sydney 2011. It was a thoroughly enjoyable day, with lots of interesting things learned.

“SkeptiCamps are informal, community-organized conferences borne from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. Everyone from casual skeptics to the experienced participate, give talks and get to know each other. Diverging from the traditional lecture events which have dominated skepticism for decades, these ‘open events’ tear down the barriers to organizing substantive (and fun) events by building on the wildly-successful Barcamp conference model from the tech community.”

Source: Skepticamp.org

I’ve always been an advocate for the barcamp conference model (having helped out with organising Barcamp Canberra for the past few years) as I like facilitating an environment where people can get up in a relatively ‘safe’ environment and share something of interest. It was great to see this applied to Skepticisim and critical thinking, with the result being a day filled with interesting presentations, good food and a chance to meet lots of diverse and interesting people. The two rooms filled up with a range of speakers (of which a number of them were first time presenters). There were a broad range of topics including Genetically modified food, the application of Star Wars to the bible, dealing with the media, religious education and more.

While most of the sessions were done in the presentation style, there were a number of discussions based sessions, including two run by @lozz on Introducing women to skepticism and teaching critical thinking through entertainment. I love the discussion based format as it encourages audience participation (of which there was a lot).

I was helping out for most of the day, so I didn’t get to catch too many talks end-to-end but some of my favourite things were:

• CampCakeCamp – my offering was Chocolate Bailey’s Mini Cupcakes
• I got the end of @frozensummers’ The Gospel According to George Lucas – it was pretty funny
• Mingling and interesting chats in between all of the sessions and the post-event pub drinks
• Smooth running of the entire day – everything was fairly seemless

A big thank you to @drunkenmadman, @tinydalek, @happysinger and the other unorganisers for a fantastic and smoothly run day. Thanks to the presenters for their interesting presentations, thanks to the audience for participating and thanks to the sponsors who help make it all happen.

Hubby and I have taken a few photos, which are available at my flickr account.

Great work all and all the best to Skepticamp Melbourne 2011!

In summary, PDFs can be used as long at least one other accessible format is provided with all PDF documents.

Other advice include:

• First consider the needs of their users. Is the information to be presented best handled by a PDF?
• When creating accessible PDFs, work with properly structured source files
• Always tag PDF files
• Avoid scanned PDFs, or at least optimise them for accessibility (e.g. using Optical Character Recognition).
• Link to a list of PDF Readers instead of linking directly to PDF readers from agency websites.

My love of robots have continued, with new additions to the robot family including another lawn mower robot, a robot dog from @lozz, and some very cool retro robots.

2010 definitely seem to be the year for babies in our social circle. Every time I opened facebook, it seemed like another friend was having a baby! There were also many engagements, hens nights and weddings.

Most importantly, my interest in skepticism has grown significantly over 2010. I learned about the importance of taking a critical thinking approach to all areas of my life. Attending TAMOz in November has really helped to reinforce my growing love of science and education. I’ve learned about citizen science and grassroots skepticism (take the Stop AVN cause as an example).

So what’s my new year resolutions for 2011?

• Want less
• Do good
• Keep taking a critical thinking and an evidence-based approach to life
• As 2010 has gone past in such a blur, I’m planning on taking the time to slow down so I can appreciate each moment.
• Address my vegetable phobia within the first half of 2011!

A happy new year to all of you!

Every year, I hand make a small number of cards which get sent to a select number of friends and family. In return, I sometimes get a Christmas card back. Every year, I go through the whole, “now what can I do with these Christmas cards” thing. This year, I thought I’ll take a quick look at different ways of keeping your Christmas cards out of landfill.

Cute Sock Monkey Christmas Card by sunsetgirl creations

• I love these flickr photos of cute little boxes and magnets made from recycled christmas cards
• Recycled ribbon spool ornaments – this one uses recycled christmas cards and old ribbon spools!
• Birdhouses from Greeting Cards – cute little bird houses
• Recycle and Reuse Christmas Greeting Cards – this is a great resource – lots of links to crafty projects you can do with your christmas cards, including creating gift tags, miniature gift boxes, magnets and more.
• DIY Holiday stars – takes a bit of time but fun looking holiday star, also good as a tree topper
• Recycled Christmas Card Ornaments – make christmas tree ornaments with your old cards.
• Recycle them in your yellow-lidded recycling bin.
• Donate them to your local child care centre, school or nursing home for their craft activities.
• Make them into new cards for the following year.
• Create a keepsake basket from your old cards

Plexiglass trees by Lauren Manning

Avent calendar cones by Francine Clouden

While this isn’t made from Christmas cards, I love this advent calendar made from paper lying around your house.

Any other fun ways to recycle your old cards?

“Is it a good surprise?”, I asked.

“Depends”, was the answer.

“Do I get more clues?”, I asked.

“It’s white, and textured and not a cat” was the reply.

Shortly after, I was picked up from work and I got to see my surprise – it was a brand new Kobo eReader from Borders book store! Here’s a brief initial review of the Kobo eReader, based upon my short use of it.

About the Kobo

The Kobo eReader is an ebook reading device based on E Ink technology. The thing to note is that this is an eReader – it’s not an iPad. It does one thing – display books – and it does it well.

Things I like

• The stylish and clean design
• The lovely quilted backing – it stops the eReader from slipping from your hands
• It’s lightweight at 221 grams and fits easily in my hands
• Cheap – at $199 at Borders book stores, it’s one of the most affordable eReaders around
• It comes preloaded with a hundred books and holds up to 1000 books (more if you use an SD card)
• You don’t need any additional devices or chargers to charger this – just plug it into a USB port with a standard mini USB cable
• It supports open formats – ePub! It also takes PDF and Adobe DRM.
• I can drag and drop books straight onto the Kobo once it’s plugged into my computer (so quick and easy)
• It retains the cover of the book when the device is off (just like a real book!)
• The D-pad is located on the right hand side, similar position to where you expect to turn a page

Things I don’t like

• It takes a while to power on
• It takes a while to load each book
• When the Kobo is plugged into my computer, I can’t use the eReader at all
• There are very slight delays when ‘turning’ pages (I don’t think this is the fault of the Kobo, as it’s likely due to electronic paper technology)
• I had some issues with the way I had to navigate the PDFs I transferred to the Kobo but I need to do more experimentation to determine if it’s the source PDF or whether it’s the Kobo’s interpretation of the PDF

Things to note

It doesn’t come with 3G or Wi-Fi but that hasn’t been a problem for me so far.

The battery life is supposed to last up to two weeks (I haven’t had it long enough to test this).

eBooks from Borders Australia look fairly affordable. Take one of my favourite books – Pride And Prejudice And Zombies – the ebook is currently available for $7.95 (Australian dollars).

The verdict

On the whole, it’s a good affordable device, with a few minor quibbles. It supports open standards and books purchased can be read on other devices that have the Kobo mobile app. Is it the Kindle Killer? Only time can tell, but it looks like a real contender. I’m liking it so far.

Here’s a list of non-religious charitable organisations in Canberra that are happy to accept clothing, books and related items. Please feel free to suggest other Canberra based organisations.

• The National Brain Injury Foundation (NBIF) is one of our personal favourites. A shop front is located on Genge Street, in the Griffin Centre. You can support them by purchasing items from the shop front or dropping off a range of items in good condition (we’ve dropped off clothes and household bric-a-brac).
• Lifeline accepts books, magazines, DVD’s, Videos, CDs, computer software, and some Bric-a-Brac. They hold the very excellent Book Fair three times a year in Canberra. For more information about donating items, read Ways You Can Help or drop items off at 66 Heffernan St, Mitchell and all Video Ezy Stores.
• The Smith Family has various donation bins around Canberra. They accept clothing, footwear, blankets and linen only.

As always, please check with individual charities for up-to-date information. Please DO NOT DUMP items outside closed shop fronts or charity bins. It costs charities large amounts of money to clear items that get left out in the open plus it can be a fire hazard. It’s extremely frustrating to see items and even rubbish (including non-working electrical and computer items) dumped next to charity bins. If it’s broken and you don’t want it, neither does the charity!

Other resources:

• Giving unwanted goods to charity – list from the ACT government
• Yoink! – While Yoink! isn’t a charity, it’s a great way to recycle items that you don’t need. I’ve used it numerous times to get rid of unwanted (but functional) items. Plus, it’s been designed and developed here in Canberra!

PS: I wish the Red Cross, RSPCA and Koomarri had store fronts in Canberra!

This year, I’ve decided to write about someone who is relatively unknown in the broader web community but is very knowledgeable in the accessibility field. She would never blow her own horn, which means that only those of us who have had the pleasure of working with her knows how good she is. She’s a shy and quiet type, and is truly one of the nicest and most generous person I know. She has been working in the tech and user experience field for a while. She’s smart, passionate and she knows her accessibility stuff.

I want you to meet my friend and colleague, Kim Chatterjee. What I love about Kim is her willingness to share her knowledge and time to help everyone, even if it means very little sleep for her! She has a detailed understanding of accessibility and has spent quite a few years doing some cool accessibility work in Government. She’s also really great at communicating complex concepts through interesting and lovely visuals. She’s really humble about her achievements so if you do get to meet her, she won’t tell you how good she is but if you get to chat to her, you’ll soon realise the depth and breadth of her accessibility knowledge.

While others are out and about talking the talk, Kim is busy with the actual doing. She’s helped to inspire a number of people about accessibility, who have now gone on into other organisations either carrying a passion for accessibility or having an increased awareness of accessibility. Now that’s inspirational.

The highly anticipated BarCampCanberra event happened yesterday, with a large gathering of smart and passionate folks from around Canberra, Yass, Wollongong and Sydney discussing interesting topics such as Government 2.0, social innovation, collaboration, typography, hackerspaces and more.

For those unfamiliar with the BarCamp concept:

BarCampCanberra is a free-to-attend community-run conference where anyone can come and watch, participate or present on anything they are passionate about – either something interesting they’ve been working on, an idea they’d like to present or to brainstorm the solution to a problem with a bunch of like-minded smart people

We had over 150 people registered for the event, 46 pizzas consumed, 72 bottles of water drunk (plus the additional cups and water containers) and 39 sessions including a series of 5 minute lighting talks (I love the 5 minute lighting talk format).

The event was tweeted, flickred, livestreamed and Googled waved. We were even covered in the Canberra Times (page 8 of the Sunday 7th February newspaper).

Some of my favourite quotes about BarCampCanberra comes from @dekrazee1:

Brain is still abuzz from #bcc2010. BarCamp is the techy equivalent of a day spa. Energising and invigorating. #I<3BarCamp

@ozdj:

@RazChorev Yep. Sound ROI. That $50 of fuel (and ~8hrs of travel time) got me about $500 worth of education today. #bcc2010

Key themes

The key themes from BarCampCanberra #3 were social innovation (particularly around the grass roots level), government engagement and activity (engagement and activity is not the same thing) and taking action after conversation.

My presentation

I was too busy running between rooms to actually sit down and listen to the presentations in full, particularly for the first half of the day. I manage to present in the afternoon on a number of topics that’s important to me: critical thinking, skepticism and quirkology.

I also manage to catch the Make Hack Void presentation (@evildeece, @__dev_dsp, @_xmd_), @evildeece ACT solar tariff, Bob Edward’s I have no Friends on Facebook presentation and all of the lightning talks in the afternoon. @sabman’s Mapping of Haiti presentation was a particular stand out.

Thanks

Many thanks to all the wonderful presenters who took the time and effort to share their knowledge. I know that it takes a lot to get up there and talk or run a discussion group, even in this type of informal setting. It was my husband’s first time getting up and talking in front of such a crowd and I’m pleased that first time presenters are able to present in a non-threatening environment.

Thanks to our wonderful sponsors: Powerhouse Museum, Microsoft, Crystal Approach, Schmooze, SassySEO.com and TheRohans.com.

Thanks to my co-unorganisers: @NathanaelB, @RohanM, @CraigThomler, @lozz, @RaeBuerckner, @Klepas and @Caronne (who couldn’t make it, but had her partner drive all the way to the venue with much needed powerboards and extension cables!). Thanks also to the wonderful Gavin (@wingedmonkeyboy) who was busy running between all three rooms to get photos of the crowds and the presenters.

Thanks to the ANU and Bob Edwards for providing the venue and wireless.

Clever and useful stuff

• Check out the presentations – BarCamp Canberra #3 on slideshare
• Check out the photos tagged #bcc2010 – Barcamp Canberra #3 photos on flickr
• See who registered – BarCamp Canberra #3 on Eventbrite
• Read the twitter stream
• We made it into the Canberra times!
• Check out the tweeting stats for the event
• @laurentlefort’s Twitter list of BCC2010 attendees

Update: Many thanks to Geoff from @SubwayBelconnen who provided the salads and subs at BarCampCanberra!